


queen of the damned

by uglowian



Category: Bandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Blood and Violence, Community: no_tags, F/F, Fairy Tale Retellings, Girls Kissing, playing fast and loose with Greek mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 07:37:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13970370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uglowian/pseuds/uglowian
Summary: prompt #4 - alicia way/lindsey way, snow whitealicia's granddad always said she was magic.alicia's pretty sure she isn't.





	queen of the damned

_Everyone gets the story wrong. They all get so excited about oh, here he comes, saturnine Death on his sad pale horse, but that's not where the story starts. The story_ starts _with a little girl named Kore._

 

Here's the thing: no one ever _explicitly said_ Alicia wasn't going to amount to much.

It's just that it's raining, and she just lost her fucking job (okay…she quit? She quit but that's because fucking Elfaba The Evil Witch was not only a witch, but also a bitch, so fuck you), and she maybe just stepped in a puddle while trying to storm indignantly out of witch-bitch's apothecary after said dramatic job loss, so now her shoe's all wet and squelchy on the inside. And the rain's making her eyeliner run.

So no, no one needs to _say it_ to her, okay? She very much, so very deeply, already fucking knows.

She's soaked all the way through by the time she makes it to her shitty apartment complex and up the five flights of equally-shitty, very creaky steps (that their jackass landlord only lights with what she's pretty sure are off-market pixie glowworms because fuck mythical creatures, right?) to her actual flat.

"'Licia?"

Alicia almost trips, trying to tug her gross shoes off and kick the front door closed all at once. Lindsey's voice sounds all muffled.

"Yeah it's me!" she shouts.

She gets some response that she can't understand and—ugh her shoe is full of fucking gutter mud—doesn't bother to call _what_. It's just a stomp down the hallway, past Lindsey's closed bedroom door, to the bathroom. Maybe Alicia's not going anywhere in life, but at least she can go nowhere in a hot shower.

 

"You told her to choke on blackroot?"

Mikey sounds very amused, which, for Mikey, means he made a sound approaching a laugh. Even in the bar's shitty lighting (seriously? Is there a neighborhood pact on glowworms or something?), Alicia makes out the way his mouth curls. She punches his arm.

"She was a _bitch_ , okay?"

"Most people just say 'go fuck yourself'."

"I'm a poet."

Mikey snorts. "Okay, Sappho."

Alicia drags on her cigarette and doesn't dignify him with a response. She flags down the waitress instead and orders another dark and stormy.

"So," Mikey ventures. "You didn't tell Lindsey?"

"It happened like four hours ago."

"You're all bitchy."

"I _lost my job_ —"

"—you quit—"

"—asshole."

"And you're only ever this bitchy if you didn't talk to Lindsey first. I'm like. The bitchy-backup-friend."

Alicia rolls her eyes. "You're like a fucking annoying friend. And I haven't seen Lindsey in, like, a week."

"You guys live together."

"She's hiding in her room. Again."

"Well now you'll have plenty of time to catch her." Mikey raises his glass. "To funemployment."

"I hate you."

"I know."

Their waitress returns with Alicia's dark and stormy. She drinks it slow to let it burn.

 

_Kore was a girl, who, you'll note, also liked plants. Quite a lot, in fact. Her mother was the sort of woman who inspired the whole 'green thumb' thing. Kore took after her. Of course, no one thought Kore would be all that special. Her mother was_ already _the best woods-witch you could imagine, and, being who she was, not likely to die anytime soon. But Kore kept her own little bower full of flowers and roots and creeping vines that she tended to all by herself. She was proud of what she could do._

 

Alicia _liked_ working at the apothecary, is the thing. Sure, she's no recognized-by-the-state, licensed-to-practice actual witch or anything. Like. She understands that she's not magic, okay—and even if she were, dropping out of school really puts the brakes on having your own shop where you make your own tinctures, and poultices, and palliatives, and potions (and poisons, sometimes, but no one talks about that).

The most she's ever going to be is someone's grunt in a greenhouse.

But really? She's fine with that. She likes hanging out with little seedlings, okay. They're, like…way better than people.

"You're such a fucking weirdo," Mikey tells her as they walk back to her apartment.

"You read ancient runes all day."

"I know, I'm a genius."

Alicia bumps her shoulder against his, because she kind of loves him, even when he's the worst. Now that it's stopped raining, the night feels a little bit cooler. She tries to avoid stepping in anymore puddles.

They stop at the door to her complex and she squints up at the way it blots out what few stars there are to see with the huge black block of itself.

"Hey," Mikey says, tapping the toe of his kicks to hers. "You okay?"

Alicia shrugs, suddenly thinking of Lindsey. _She_ always makes rent and half the time Alicia isn't even sure she has a real job.

"I'll be fine," she mumbles.

"You don't look fine."

"I'm just worried about Lindsey."

Mikey shrugs. "Maybe she just likes hanging out in her room."

That seems impossible. Lindsey's fun, and friendly, and sometimes she'll order pizza while Alicia's on her walk back from work—when she _had_ a walk back from work—and they'll sit up and watch shitty action movies all night. Like a slumber party, except they're adults, so everything sucks except the pizza and the movies and having two friends you really like.

Anyway, the point is: Lindsey's weird days-long hideouts in her room seem out of character, even though she's been doing stuff like this ever since Alicia moved in.

"Or maybe," Mikey suggests, "she's a werewolf and not telling you."

Alicia kicks _his_ foot this time, because he's so fucking stupid.

"You're so fucking stupid."

She'd like to be very clear on this point.

Mikey gives her a weird side-hug anyway.

"Call me if you need to drown your sorrows tomorrow night, too," he says. "And don't get too down. You'll find something else."

Sometimes she worries about him. But she gives him a squeeze anyway, and that's that. Back up the shitty stairs, with the sad little glowworms trapped in their bulbs.

 

She does not find something else.

Two months and most of the money in her checking account disappear, and still. Nothing else.

She slouches on the couch, frowning at all the little creepers she's potted and arranged very carefully on the windowsill, because she loves them, and they need sunlight. Some of them are even starting to sprout a shimmery flower or two.

Behold: the only thing she's ever achieved in life. Baby plant-rearing.

"Licia, I think you're giving yourself a hard time."

Lindsey puts two bowls of ramen on their coffee table and then drops onto the couch. A huge bruise makes a big, purple crescent around the outer curve of her eye socket. Lindsey always insists that her weird bedroom hideouts are because she has a stomach ache or really bad PMS and also really bad cramps, but Alicia has had a stomach and a uterus her whole life. Neither ever gave her a black eye.

"I'm not giving myself a hard time," she insists, peering at Lindsey. "No one wants to hire a lab tech who's never _technically_ worked in a lab."

"Fuck that, old woman what's-her-name's didn't count as a lab?"

"No, not like they want."

And it's true. Old woman what's-her-name—Marcia, technically, even though Alicia liked to call her Elfaba behind her back. Ugh. _Marcia_ the fucking witch—ran a little mom'n'pop shop. Excalicorps and whatever are all big pharmaceuticals. They want people with _formal training_.

Alicia doesn't feel like explaining all this. Instead, she leans closer, frowning at Lindsey's bruise.

" _Where_ did you get this?"

Lindsey pokes her in the ribs. "Nowhere."

"Your face just gets black eyes all by itself?"

"It's not a big deal."

It seems like a huge deal. It's Lindsey's fucking _face_. Alicia feels like she should want to keep it intact for a few more years.

"I can make you something for it?" she offers. "I _did_ understudy for a witch. Even if no one else thinks that means anything."

Lindsey smiles and pats her cheek. "It's okay, Licia. I promise. I don't need any potions or anything."

Alicia hates that she's so pretty when she smiles—she doesn't hate it because Lindsey's pretty, but because it scares Alicia. It scares her to think that wherever Lindsey goes and whatever she does, someone else might not care how pretty she is, or how sweet she is, or how smart she is, or how fucking happy Alicia is that she exists.

Lindsey gives her a quick hug.

"I promise," she says again, and digs the remote out from between the couch cushions. "C'mon. Your ramen's gonna get cold."

"God forbid," Alicia mumbles.

But she really is hungry, and ramen is indisputably better when it's hot. Lindsey flicks the TV to _Legally Blonde_.

Everything else might suck, but this part of Alicia's life, at least, is nice.

 

Her little creepers keep on growing. The hanging dragon's nest makes their bathroom smell like rich wood. The moonbells bloom. That's pretty cool. She keeps them in the windowbox in her room, and they glow—a lot like moondrops, as chance would have it—when she goes to sleep at night. She likes them so much.

So her plants grow and Lindsey's ugly bruises fade (again).

Still no job, though.

She takes to hiding in her room. In bed. "Depression bed"—she's pretty sure that's the colloquial term.

When she was a little girl, her granddad used to tell her she was magic. She knew he didn't really mean it, she wasn't _really_ magic—but her granddad told a lot of good stories, and it was fun to pretend to believe him.

(He even told her, once, that _he_ had been a girl, but only just for a little bit. Back when the old gods of the forest thought it would be funny to turn him into one.

There aren't forests anymore—not the way there used to be in all her granddad's stories—and even if there were, gods aren't real, everyone knows that. When she asked him if he meant fae, he smiled, and his blind eyes stared at nothing, and he petted her hair.

_No, no, Allie,_ he promised. _I'd know the difference._

Again, it was more fun to pretend to believe him.)

She wishes she could believe him now.

Staring up at the ceiling over her bed, she feels like the opposite of magic. She feels like a hexed lump.

She wonders what he'd say, if she could tell him that all she's good at is growing plants for people who are for real magic. And also not getting jobs.

He'd probably tell her not to worry, actually. He told her she was magic, and he also told her not to worry about finding her place in the world.

_If there isn't a place, Allie, just make one._

Tiresias Simmons, boys and girls. 

She rolls onto her belly and tugs her sheets over her head. It's a lot easier to make your place in the world when you don't have to worry about buying food for the week.

 

_There are a lot of different stories—opinions—about what happens to Kore. Naturally. You try to get scholars of ancient Greek, Latin, and Faeric runes to agree on anything. The Brothers Grimm didn't help either. But in_ my _opinion, and therefore my story, Kore is a smart and curious young woman who, unfortunately, ends up in the crosshairs of very fickle and very cruel forces._

_There's a king, you see. Or maybe a queen—one or the other (there always is, isn't there)—who owes something to someone. Sometimes a brother, sometimes a god, sometimes one of those hungry faeries who wants to eat a baby, so you have to trade them something better than a baby._

_Like a smart, magic girl._

_It's like that. There's a lightning god or a jealous queen with golden apples who wants to make a bargain. And Kore might be smart and special, but she's not special to them. She's just (conveniently) the magic daughter of a more magic woman, and gods and faeries love nothing more than magic blood._

_Eat the smart, magic girl alive, says the god or the king or the queen. She's of no consequence to me._

 

Lindsey comes home with a bloody nose and a swollen eye while Alicia's staring at her laptop, which means she's staring at her bank account, which means she's on the verge of tears.

So the beat up face kind of scary, but in a weird way, at least it's a distraction from Alicia's imminent homelessness.

She makes Lindsey sit on the toilet in the bathroom while she piles a clutch of half full bottles in the sink.

"Are you gonna fucking tell me what's going on?" she asks, dabbing greenish goop on Lindsey's eye.

"Are you going to keep putting snot on my face?"

"It's not snot, it's toadsblood—"

"— _blood_ —"

"—it's a kind of sap, okay. Chill out." She wrinkles her nose. "How're you gonna be all weird when you have actual blood on your actual face?"

Lindsey sighs. When Alicia straightens up to grab another bottle, Lindsey fishes something out of her pocket.

A huge wad of cash, it turns out. All crumpled and dirty.

"What…the fuck," Alicia says.

Lindsey gives her a sheepish look. "I know you were stressed about rent money, so I figured I'd help."

 

Alicia is. Incensed.

Kind of.

She's also horrified because _what the actual fuck, Lindsey, it's your actual fucking face_ , and that feels way less important than Alicia's fucking rent money.

To which Lindsey says:

"It's okay, Licia, I do it all the time."

"You _cagefight_ all the time?"

"It's not cagefighting, it's like. Fight club fighting. People bet and everything."

"Are you insane?"

"Maybe a little." Lindsey grins. "But it means I don't need to have a day job."

"If you die, I'm gonna kill you."

Lindsey gets her arms around Alicia's waist and hugs her close. So close that her face—or the not hurt side of her face, at least—is sort of pressed to Alicia's stomach.

"I won't. I'm really good," she says. "Kind of stupid good. I promise."

"Good enough to not get a concussion?"

"Have I gotten one yet?"

Alicia feels like that's so not the same thing. Lindsey gives her a squeeze.

"You should come next time. You can pretend you don't know me, and bet on me, and when I win, we'll both cash out."

Alicia…hates her life. For a lot of reasons.

"How do I know you're gonna win?"

Lindsey looks up at her, her hair falling back from her face. "I always win. They don't call me the Huntsman for nothing."

She's such a fucking dork.

 

_Death, in this story, and in any story, tends to come in many forms._

_Plague and pestilence, for example._

_The breath out of the sky that steals everyone's firstborn._

_A reaper, or a woman with a desiccated face. Thanatos, if you want to go Bigger Than Biblical._

_And sometimes death is a dour man on a pale horse. Those stories have a less happy end than most._

_So imagine Kore in her garden, indifferent to the soapy operatic dramas of gods and kings—why should she care about all that? She made no promises to anyone, and neither did her mother._

_There's a word for what Death did to her, riding in on his pale horse. We'll skip that part. Suffice to say our saturnine rider, the one you've been waiting to hear all about, carried Kore away, away, away, to the underworld. It shared his name._

 

The…club? Ring? Place? Alicia doesn't know what to call it, but it's a basement, definitely. Like a really big basement. Split-level, even, with the fighting ring in an almost-pit, and some kind of elevated whatever for everyone else.

Also? There's definitely a cage, so ugh.

And it smells of beer, and shitty liquor, and sweat, and probably blood too. Alicia can't quite tell. She has a normal human nose; at a certain point, smells just smell like…well. Smells.

Lindsey leads her through the crowd to Mikey fucking Way of all people, and dips out with a smile. _Gotta go get ready._

Alicia thinks her heart's going to crawl out of her throat so she punches Mikey in the arm instead. She knows she does that a lot, but it's just because he deserves it a lot.

"You fucking knew about this?"

Mikey smirks a little bit. "I know about everything."

"I hate you."

"You've mentioned. You want a drink?"

She so deeply does. Mikey gets her something that tastes like rotgut, which is good, because she feels like she needs a fucking sleepspell to calm down. The bodies pressing around them aren't even all human. There're orcs, and some very tall purebred elves trying to look more punk rock than they probably are, and _hobgoblins_ , sneering and showing off their long, glittering teeth, and hulking half-giants and ogres. She even glimpses the two lissome fae, softly glowing in the crowd, and just. What the actual flying fuck.

"C'mon," Mikey shouts, dragging her to the landing's railing.

Two fights precede Lindsey's and the whole thing is just. Terrifying. A lady ogre—is that politically incorrect? Ogress? Alicia isn't really clear on what the ogre-in-group feels about identity—takes on an elf. It's messy. And the ogre wins and maybe it's biased to say so, but ogres winning cage fights feels kind of like a no-brainer.

The second fight looks like it's going to maybe be a little more fair? Two hobgoblins with stage names (cage names?) that Alicia didn't catch have it out. One of them clearly has better…technique?…than the other, and hobgoblin number two gets railed in the face so hard Alicia's skin crawls. He ends up spitting blood and shouting something Alicia can't hear over all the cawing and shouting and booing and cheering.

All of a sudden hobgoblin number one backs off and the refs (or whatever they are, they probably have a dumb special name) crawl into the cage, and hobgoblin number two gets kind of picked up. They help him stagger out of the ring.

"What's going on?" Alicia shouts.

"He tapped a sub in," Mikey explains. "You can do that, but just once, if you have someone willing. But it cuts your wins in half. And everyone who bet on you gets nothing, even if the sub wins."

A fucking half-giant climbs into the ring. People shriek and shout.

In the end, hobgoblin number one still wins. Alicia is _impressed_.

And then it's Lindsey's turn, and an orc—an orc, oh motherfuck—climbs into the cage with her.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the ref booms. "The Psychopomp, in the left corner. And The Huntsman on the right."

The crowd goes wild. Alicia thinks she's going to be sick.

 

As it turns out, there's no need to be scared. Or even worried. Lindsey's not just good, she's fucking incredible. She _flies._

Sure, she takes some hits here and there, but she dances around the cage like lightning, pigtails flying and knees bleeding. She grins a feral grin around her mouth guard and wrecks the orc in under ten minutes flat.

Everyone shouts and hoots. Alicia's face hurts from grinning.

 

At home, Alicia makes Lindsey drink a brew that she doesn't know the name of, because Marcia couldn't remember it, but that she knows how to make. It's supposed to be good for your bones and your muscles. Regenerative, or whatever. She also gives Lindsey more toadsblood, for her knees.

"This is gross," Lindsey complains, sipping the brew.

It's true. It's pretty gross. Alicia tried it one time after she banged her hand in a door at Marcia's. But it helped the pain go away, and her hand never swelled up, and all she got was a small shadow of a bruise across her knuckles.

"It's good for you," she tells Lindsey.

She clicks through the late night TV selection. There's nothing good on, so they end up picking a DVD to watch instead. _Steel Magnolias_ , because Alicia identifies with Ouiser Boudreaux on a deep level.

Lindsey keeps sipping the brew.

"Where'd you get all the stuff to make this?" she wants to know. "Is that what all the plants are?"

Alicia blushes. "No."

"Then wh—oh my _god_. Did you steal fucking Marcia blind after you quit?"

Alicia blushes _more_. "Fuck no, I didn't have time. I just…took stuff sometimes. I did all the inventory anyway, and there were some things we never used." She looks at her lap. "I like trying to make stuff on my own."

"I live with a drug-cooking badass," Lindsey grins. "That's so fucking cool."

Alicia's pretty sure she's going to die, right here, right now, on this couch.

Lindsey bumps their feet together, jovial, and keeps sipping from her mug. She falls asleep when she finishes. Alicia feels a little bit bad waking her up, but—

"You have to go sleep in a real bed, stupid."

She feels kind of worse when Lindsey gives her a muzzy smile.

"Look at you," Lindsey murmurs. "Saving my ass twice."

Later, in her own bed with her little moonbells glowing, Alicia figures it's just her luck. She's going to die destitute and in completely unrequited love. Perfect.

 

She keeps trying to find a job. If she can't do anything about the tortured vicissitudes of her human heart, at least she can try to avoid the destitute part. Plus, she feels shitty about Lindsey covering both their rent.

She does keep going to the fights though. Lindsey's just. Magnificent? Like, really, it's like watching someone from another world. Alicia's starting to wonder if Lindsey's magic, like pedigreed magic, or if she's got fae somewhere in her family, or—

"I think you just have a crush on her," Mikey points out.

Mikey takes her out to breakfasts now, that's how fucking broke she is. Alicia still wants to throttle him, for saying shit like this.

"I don't have a crush."

"You super do."

"I super don't."

"You're blushing."

"You suck so much."

Mikey sips his coffee, smug. "You should tell her."

That's the absolute worst idea. Alicia makes a face at him. "Do you tell your crushes when you're into them?"

"I don't get crushes."

"What the hell, you have a _boyfriend_ , how did you—"

"Pete's different." Mikey sounds long-suffering, like Alicia's missing something obvious. "We just fucked until we fell in love. And now we're dating."

"Romantic."

"He's not complaining."

Alicia cannot believe him. She says as much and takes a very inelegant bite of her egg sandwich. It's really good.

"You should tell her," Mikey says again, while some burst egg yolk runs down her chin.

Her mouth's too full for her to argue. He's probably right anyway. It sucks, because he's even more the worst when he's right.

 

_A few things happen when Death takes Kore away. You definitely know this part. Winter—a kind of obvious, but very effective metaphor for grief. The red, red pomegranate seeds, which are of course sex. Everyone agrees on those bits._

_What's up for debate: did Kore die or not? Did she like it in Death's dreary kingdom or did she want to go home? What happened to her quiet little bower?_

_Who knows._

_What's irrevocable: Kore's not the same after this. Someone goes back to the grieving mother, and to the bower, and to all the plants that need tending, but not Kore. Not really._

 

Still no job.

The fights are fun at least. Sometimes Alicia thinks she should be down in that cage, getting her aggression out on someone else's face.

She gets her chance—but not how she expected.

Lindsey's in the cage with an icy looking elf— _Hades_ , the ref said, while Alicia tried not to roll her eyes, because, fucking really, dude?—and it's the same as usual for a while. Lindsey dancing and the elf looking snooty and bewildered. And occasionally pained when Lindsey lands a hit or two.

It's weird, though. Lindsey's sharp. Her punches and her kicks aren't gentle. But aside from looking slightly dizzy, the elf seems unfazed. And then he lunges, fast as light, and trips Lindsey, and they're both on the ground, grappling.

Lindsey lands one hit, two hits, to the elf's face. Another to his throat. He doesn't flinch.

"Oh _fuck_ ," Mikey breathes.

"What?" Alicia's stomach clenches, tight, tight, tight.

"That motherfucker charmed himself."

" _What?_ That's allowed?"

Lindsey lands another strike. This time, the elf headbuts her, and she goes slack for a minute. Alicia wants to scream.

"No, it's not fucking allowed," Mikey says. "But no one's here because they play by the rules."

Lindsey takes another smack to the face. People cheer. Alicia has never gotten somewhere so fast.

Down in the pit, the cage looks huge, and the figures in the cage look huge too, and everyone else seems very far away.

"Miss," the ref starts, holding out an arm. "Miss, you can't—"

"I'm her substitute," Alicia shouts. "I'm here to switch."

The ref frowns, and Lindsey hasn't given any signal that she needs a substitute. She hasn't given any signal at all. She's on her back, getting hit in the face, again, again, again, by this stupid elf and his too-wide smirk.

But one blow knocks her head to the side. Her face—oh god, her face—is so beaten red, and one eye's swelling shut. And she smiles at Alicia around her mouthguard and shouts a garbled _substitute!_

Alicia will never know how she knew.

The elf freezes.

By the time they pull Lindsey out of the cage, Mikey's down in the pit, too. Above them, jeering and cheering thunders like a coming storm.

"Alicia, what the fuck." He catches her shoulder. "What're you—"

But the ref and another man bring Lindsey to them. They deposit her into a rickety ringside chair. Mikey has to abandon his question, going to catch her instead, because she looks like she can't hold herself up. Alicia wants to cry.

"Licia," Lindsey grins, and pinkred spit runs out of her mouth. She looks like she's about to pass out.

"Lindsey—"

The ref taps her shoulder. "Get in, or she forfeits."

Mikey gives her this big-eyed look that clearly says she should forfeit. And? Alicia knows, okay. She gets that this is stupid, _she's_ not stupid. She might not be good at much, but she's not also stupid. She can see, even outside of the fact that she's never done this before, how the odds like. Maybe aren't stacked in her favor.

But Lindsey leans heavy into Mikey. Alicia's stomach clenches.

"Okay," she shouts to the ref. "I'm—"

"Licia, wait," Lindsey croaks. She spits out her mouth guard. It's slimy with saliva, but she holds it out to Alicia anyway, with one shivering hand. "You need this."

Alicia tells herself she can cry later. Or in the cage. When she's getting _her_ face beat in. She takes the mouth guard.

"You got a name?" the ref asks.

She looks at Lindsey one more time. "Yeah. Snow White."

After that, there's no more time to think. She gets the guard in her mouth and the ref gets her by the wrist. She's somewhat aware of him thrusting her arm up in the air, crowing _Snow White, everybody_. She sort of hears the roar of the crowd. It's just that the mouth guard is soft and warm and it's Lindsey's.

It tastes of Lindsey, which probably just means it tastes like blood, but Alicia doesn't really care.

Soft, chewed up, and not meant for her mouth. But it sort of fits anyway.

The ref pushes her into the cage. She feels the closing of the door—it makes a really loud sound—crash in her chest. The elf leers and a bell rings and Alicia bites hard on the mouth guard and thinks _you have such a stupid fucking name_.

 

When she was little, one of her granddad's favorite stories was about this girl— _a goddess_ , he whispered, conspiratorially, just to make Alicia laugh—named Kore. She was something like a woods-witch, if goddesses could be like woods-witches—

_So like a fae?_

_No, Allie, like a woods-witch. And a goddess._ He winked. _Too normal to be very faelike, I promise._

An answer that, in retrospect but also at the time, made no sense.

—but just pretend that goddesses can be like woods-witches, okay? Just go with it.

Kore, the goddess-woods-witch-normal-girl, got bargained off by her king-of-the-gods father. To his dour brother, no less.

_Why?_

Her granddad's eyes were milky and white from his blindness. He looked sad.

_Because gods, and usually fathers, are selfish and not very kind._

Alicia didn't understand. She loved her granddad. Her own dad, her actual real dad, had died when she was a toddler. She really didn't have very many data points. And she was, like, eight years old at the time. There was a lot she didn't know.

But Kore's dad gave her away to his brother, her uncle, who arrived basically out of nowhere in a wreath of grey mist. He held his hand out to her, while the green things in her bower wilted and died wherever his pale horse set foot. It was a weird move, frankly. Pretending like she could decide to not take his hand if she wanted to.

No one, not even goddesses, have much of a choice when death comes knocking at their door.

So he took her away, on his pale horse, down, down, down into the cold place bounded by rivers and pools that was like a cave of onyx.

Her granddad was really big on how this was everyone's favorite part of the story, which was pretty sad in his opinion.

 

Alicia thinks it's weird that she's not scared all of a sudden.

She's definitely facing down certain doom, she's pretty sure. Or at least very serious bodily injury, and probably some subsequent major bills for emergency care. It's a good thing she has no money and no job.

But she's not scared. She jumps at the stupid smug elf.

_You're magic, Allie._

She never felt like she was magic ever, not even once in her life.

Okay, well.

She felt a little bit magic with all her plants. The ones she kept in her room as a kid, and the ones she learned to grow outside, and the cute ones that she sometimes kissed goodnight (shut up, she liked them), and the dying ones she brought with her when she moved into Lindsey's apartment that she coaxed back to life, and the magnificent ones in Marcia's muggy greenhouse whose names she got to memorize from old books that were mostly written in runes. Mikey helped her read the important parts.

She doesn't feel like magic now. She doesn't feel like anything.

It's just that she's humming inside and, turns out, she can fly like Lindsey can.

And she hits the elf in his ugly, smug mouth, and her blood, her red red human blood, _sings_.

 

What happened to Kore, all the way down in the cold kingdom? What did she change into?

 

It's weird, is what it is.

It's weird because it's so easy.

She can tell there's…something…not normal about the elf. Like he's wearing invisible armor. She can feel it, but it matters so very very little.

She kicks him in the throat and in the chest.

She hooks one foot behind his knee.

She throws him into the cage's chainlink steel and feels, with what's maybe a kind of sociopathic amount of glee, how his bones rattle in his body.

 

_She came back. Back from the dead place, back to her bower. She turned into something terrifying and venerable, with sharp eyes and the spring's sunlight pouring out of her mouth, with vines that writhed up wherever she walked, and ivy that sprung from her hands, and flowers of every imaginable sort growing in a carpet out of her hair._

 

She gets the elf by the hair and throws him to the ground.

She isn't very gentle and his charm—his dumb, cheating charm—does nothing to protect him.

Yeah, it's really fucking weird.

She always figured if her granddad was right, if whatever kind of magic she had suddenly manifested, it would be over something small, like…

Actually, she doesn't know.

She definitely _didn't_ think it would show up here, in a gross basement, while she's swallowing around the red, tangy taste of the girl she kind of loves.

The elf spits in her face and hits her.

She hits him right back.

 

Why did Kore change?

 

She headbuts the elf, just like he headbutted Lindsey.

 

_Death changes you. And Kore was special. She was the only girl to look Death in the face after everything he'd done to her, to fight him, and to win._

_So even when she went home, she was different. She whispered her bower back to life, and her mother was still sort of her mother, but the kingdom was part of her now. It changed her name. In exchange, the kingdom became hers._

 

They scrabble all around. She gets sort of tangled in his limbs because he's an elf and he's all tall and bony. She hates him so fucking much.

She knees him in the gut, thrills when his eyes blare, and throws him off her. She pounces.

She gets him face down and grabs his hair.

 

What was Kore's new name?

 

She bounces his head off the ground. Again and again and again.

The charm maybe saves him from _actually_ dying, but he's crying under her, his breath burbling on wet sounds.

She rears his head up by the hair and he's got blood gushing out of his nose and from his smashed up brow, and probably his cheekbone too. She doesn't know how she knows that—she's can't really see his face, not from where she's sitting, straddling the small of his back.

She just knows.

He gags under her.

Good, she thinks. Fucking good.

She smashes his face down one more time.

With one weak arm, he taps out.

 

_The Dread Queen, Persephone._

 

Turns out Lindsey didn't see her win.

Lindsey passed out, like, immediately, basically in Mikey's arms.

Mikey _did_ see her win, though, and keeps giving her weird looks on the walk home. They're basically supporting Lindsey between them. She's mostly awake now, and dizzy, and woozy.

"Stop being weird," Alicia says.

"I just watched you go full-on berserker in a fucking cage fight," Mikey says. "I can be a little weird."

Lindsey snorts. A big clot of blood splats out of her nose, and then she coughs, and it sounds all wet and gross.

"Ow—fucking shit—"

"What did you say about not needing a doctor?" Mikey asks.

"I'll be fine," Lindsey mumbles.

One half of her face is so swollen it looks like tenderized meat. Alicia hopes that that shitlord elf can't walk for a week. Or maybe a month.

"It's okay," she promises both of them. "I know how to make stuff that'll help."

Mikey laughs. "You're so creepy and weird."

"You're so creepy and weird."

"I know, it's great."

 

They get Lindsey into bed. Her clothes are pretty fucking gross but they can't do much about that. Mikey hangs around, texting (Pete, probably) while Alicia sets out like four different pots, and gets to chopping what needs chopping, and simmering what needs simmering.

She thrusts a mortar and pestle at him. And a sprig of dried ghost petals (really they're whole flowers. Whoever named them petals was an idiot).

"Grind these up for me."

Mikey puts his phone away, eyeing all the pots.

"I think you love her," he smirks.

"Fuck off."

He takes the mortar and pestle.

 

He's so fucking right, is the thing. When he leaves with a _call me if you need anything_ , she slips into Lindsey's room clutching a whole bowl full of the no-one-knows-what-it's-called brew, and a glass of water, and the jar of toadsblood crammed in her pocket.

Her jeans are also pretty gross, but whatever. She'll change later.

She helps Lindsey put the toadsblood on her face. She recommends the water first, and then the brew.

"You're the best, you know that?" Lindsey asks.

Her face is too fucked up for her to smile, but Alicia smiles back at her anyway, like a colossal fucking idiot. Her ears even get kind of hot.

Fuck everything.

"I have more stuff for you out in the kitchen," she says. "Salves and stuff. Some won't be ready til morning, but you should get these down."

Lindsey's crusted up hand with its split knuckles finds Alicia's own.

"Thanks," she says softly.

Forget cagefighting.

Lindsey Ballato is going to be the death of her.

 

In the morning, there's not even a little bit of swelling in Lindsey's face.

"I showered and only felt kind of a little sore," she smiles, picking apart her french toast with her long fingers.

Because Alicia got up early to make french toast because she was worried and because shut up.

They just sit next to each other on the couch, huddled in blankets.

"Well. I know what I'm doing?" Alicia says.

Lindsey looks so happy. "Yeah, you do." She eats a little bit more of her food and it's quite for a while before she says: "So, tell me. Did you kick ass last night?"

"Yeah, I kind of did."

"You're my favorite."

Alicia looks at her own plate. She's mostly eaten everything. There are just little bits of crust swimming around in a puddle of syrup.

She puts the plate on the coffee table.

"Can I tell you something else?"

Lindsey sucks syrup off her thumb. "Sure."

_I kind of love you,_ Alicia thinks, but never says it.

She lurches forward on her knees, and the couch kind of gives under her, and she has to catch herself on the back cushions. But she does kiss Lindsey. Not even a bad kiss, or a too fast kiss. A real, I-want-to-kiss-you kiss.

Lindsey's mouth even tastes like syrup and also the gross brew that Alicia made her drink more of before she ate. It's like so. Something.

And it takes a second, but Lindsey laughs, and murmurs _dork_ and kisses Alicia back.


End file.
